Red Dirt Diary 3 (11 page)

I am writing this while Mat and I sit and watch a movie called
You Make Me Smile
. So far it looks like it should be called
You Make Me Spew
. Everyone keeps sighing and giving each other these long, meaningful looks as though they have a bad case of indigestion.

We have spent
all day
doing our hair and make-up, trying on Mrs Sweeney's clothes (???) and talking about boys. I think we also did some exfoliating, but I can't be sure because I don't really know what exfoliating is!

Normally I would have been looking for a herd of stampeding hippos to throw myself under
by lunch time, but we have also managed to come up with a fantastic new strategy for
M
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. This month's edition of
The Bake Tribulation
is going to have a SCOTTISH THEME! How clever is that?

Every single page that Mr Cluff reads will remind him of Scotland and the radiant Katherine McKenzie so that he is driven
insane
with love and loneliness and simply
must
travel across the globe to be reunited with the
love of his life
(Mat's words, not mine!).

Mrs Sweeney has agreed to let us print her Scottish shortbread recipe. I am working on a Scottish comic strip.

Mat is going to change the next episode of
Heart's Triumph
. Elizabeth is going to be sent away to Scotland by her cruel father, and Edmund will be driven
insane
with love and loneliness and simply
must
travel across the globe to be reunited with the
love of his life
… mushy, lovey, kissy, kissy … blah, blah, blah …

Whatever! As long as it works.

Sunday, 17 June

Mat and I sat up the back during Mass. Mat spent the whole service working on the Scottish
episode of ‘Heart's Triumph'. Gabby spent the whole service bandaging her little brother from head to toe. By the end of Mass he'd fallen asleep and looked like an Egyptian mummy.

Mrs Murphy ate three chocolate bars during the sermon. She would have eaten four, but Worms's tummy was rumbling so loudly she passed one to him.

This afternoon Mat and I baked three tins full of shortbread and practised drawing Scottish thistles.
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is barrelling along!

Monday, 18 June

Had a fantastic day on our bush safari. Jack and Davo carried the pigeons in their own special little cage — except for Feathers. Worms carried Feathers stuffed down his jumper. The rest of us took water, food and ropes.

We started by making a big camp fire. The Colonel showed us how to get a flame by rubbing two sticks together. It was amazing. The rest of us tried, but all we managed to get was splinters and blisters.

Mr Cluff set up a whole heap of ropes activities across the gully. Mat was really getting into the
spirit of things until she tried to Tarzan swing across the creek. Her kilt got tangled in the rope, so she landed on the opposite bank dressed in her boots, cardigan and knickers. I don't know why she was so upset. They were very nice knickers — red with pink hearts all over. Even Grace Simpson commented on how pretty they looked.

The Colonel showed us a map of the state forest while we ate lunch by the fire. He placed the compass on top of the carrier pigeon cage for us all to see. Once we got our bearings, we headed out on the southern loop for a hike. At two o'clock we came out at Harry and Dora's farm in the complete opposite direction to where we should have been.

The Colonel stared at us with his bushy eyebrows wriggling up and down.

‘Fiddlesticks and codswallop!' he cried.

He thinks the magnetite in the carrier pigeons' brains must have interfered with the magnet in the compass and given the wrong reading. It can happen. Some rocks and mountain ranges have magnetite in them too. They make it impossible to use a compass for direction.

Jack and Davo released the pigeons for their first flight home. We watched as they flew off towards their coop, then walked back in the same direction.

Back just in time to catch the bus at three o'clock.

Tuesday, 19 June

Received a poem from Banjo for
The Bake Tribulation
today.

Mat
did
wear jeans today. However we are both still wearing tartan ribbons in our hair as a hint for Mr Cluff.
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just
has
to work.

The Colonel took his class way out of town on their march this morning so they could let the
carrier pigeons go. Once they've flown home a few times, we can start getting them to carry little messages.

All of the pigeons beat the junior class home, except for Feathers. He's so used to being carried around in Worms's jumper that he doesn't like to fly any more. Worms carried him back in his beanie.

Mat, Ben and I were sitting out in the sun reading our new play for English when the pigeons arrived home. Whitey and Patch landed on Mat's shoulders, fluffed up their chest feathers and cooed. Mat thought it was because they found her particularly attractive, but they just needed to do a poo. Mat walked around all day with two white trails down her back. I didn't tell her — I didn't want her to be embarrassed.

Wednesday, 20 June

Ben, Davo and Jack have been calling Mat ‘Stripes' all day. She has no idea why, but it annoyed the guts out of her.

Tomorrow's
Bake Tribulation
should be perfect. Spent all morning with Ben putting the pieces of the newspaper together on the computer. I showed him again and again how to
PROOFREAD before he prints it out so there are no more disasters for poor Matilda Jane the Insane.

We have a record of
five
classifieds this edition, which is very exciting:

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is well on the way with the shortbread recipe, the Tourism Scotland ad, Mat's romance serial and this comic that I finished last night:

I have asked Ben to border each page of the newspaper with a Scottish design — thistles, bagpipes or tartan. I sure hope Mr Cluff gets the hint.

We took the carrier pigeons home with us on the school bus this afternoon. We let them go at Dora and Harry's front gate and Mr Cluff was going to lock them up when they flew back to
school. Worms tried to set Feathers free but he kept flying back onto his shoulder and trying to hide down his jumper. Worms had to take him home for the night.

Thursday, 21 June

Did knot tying for today's outdoor adventure lesson. We learnt the overhand knot, the timber hitch, the noose, the half-hitch and exploding knots.

Ben said the half-hitch sounds like what you keep doing when your pants are too big.

The Colonel stared at Ben, his bushy eyebrows wriggling up and down and said, ‘By golly gum it does too!' So he showed us a figure-eight knot that is perfect for holding your trousers up.

The rest of the knots were for climbing, putting up tents, building stretchers, trapping wild animals and tying up bundles of equipment.

Exploding knots are my favourite. They look like a real knot that can't be undone, but when you yank the ripcord (the end that hangs free) the knot explodes — that means it comes completely away from whatever it is tied to. How cool is that?

We each got a piece of fine rope to practise with, and I could do
everything
, including an
exploding knot. Cassie learnt to tie her own shoelaces for the first time ever. Gary and Davo tied Banjo to the monkey bars upside down. Mat knotted her rope into a heart-shaped wall-hanging to display in our year seven study room. Very handy for surviving in the wilderness!

Wes was home sick with a tummy bug today. At least that's what Mum thinks it is, but I reckon it might be from all the cat food he ate last night when he and Fez played Truth or Dare. He was dead jealous when he heard that he'd missed out on exploding knots. He's asked Mum and Dad for some dynamite for his next birthday!

Friday, 22 June

Third edition of
The Bake Tribulation
came out today and it sure has been a tribulation. Ben did an all-time dodgy job of the printing. The classifieds were
totally
scrambled: